19
Elf King
The enchantment took the rest of the day. When it became clear they wouldn't be leaving for the capital until the next day Luke used the communicator which Holly had relinked to her own in order to keep in contact with them. Holly told them to use their own helicopter to travel since it was relatively fast and they knew how to fly it. She also suggested they choose an element for Luke if they managed to add magic support to his implant at the capital. Even if he could use other elements it would be best to make his disguise as believable as possible, and the normal implants made their users choose just one element.
Seymour put them up in a guest room for the night. Each interior room of the house was decorated according to either the gnome Marigold, or the dwarf Seymour with only a handful of rooms being like the outside and meshing the décor. The room Luke was given was clearly a gnomish style. A small stream flowed from the top of a mound of rocks in the corner and across the entire room, disappearing down a drain in the opposite corner. A small bridge made of light colored wood crossed the stream leading to a literal flower bed. Luke didn't know enough about flowers to put a name to them but they were giant versions of flowers that definitely were a small variety rather than these monstrous things with four foot petals. All the petals seemed to overlap and layer themselves into a mattress of giant petals. Next to the bed was a table made of a living tree which must have been intentionally grown to bend wildly to one side creating a surface to place things while you slept. The entire room was alive like this, furniture made from trained trees and lamps of luminescent mushrooms.
Luke wasn't an outdoorsy person before, but even he could appreciate the beauty. It was surreal and the weight of the situation struck home while he stood there admiring the scene. So much had been happening ever since he had woken up, Luke didn't have time to really absorb it all, none of this had seemed real. Now for some reason the surrealism of the room in front of him was what triggered the wave of melancholy.
Luke didn't even feel right mourning the friends and family and life he had left behind because it wasn't really his. He wasn't really Luke. Not even his implant listed his name as Luke, he was L2, Luke the second, a clone. Now that Kevin was around, one of his real friends from before, he was going to have to abandon all of that and come up with an alias. The whole situation was suddenly overwhelming.
AJ had been insisting on training and practicing his spells and fighting the past nights since they didn't have to sleep. Luke started to practice again hoping it would take his mind off the past, and future, and everything in between.
Then AJ who had been quiet the whole time stopped him, “Hey Luke,” AJ didn’t often use Luke's name but now it seemed deliberate, as if he could see his thoughts, “Tell me about the time before the war"
“What about training?” Luke asked as he floated a coin around himself with telekinesis
“Nah not tonight, I only know what was in the movies, tell me what it was really like.”
And so he did. Luke spent the whole night talking. He told AJ about his friends, about college, about his job. He told him about all the mundane things he missed most. At several points through the night he grew thirsty from all the talking, even though he didn't need to drink anymore as long as he was supplied with magic power, he drank from the stream’s cool and refreshing water and kept talking.
Time flew by, It only seemed like minutes but something happened that night as Luke spoke. He wasn't the original Luke, that person probably died a long time ago, but he WAS Luke. That night Luke Tubbs was laid to rest, and Luke Second finally took the reigns.
Even though he didn't sleep or need sleep anymore, Luke felt more refreshed the next morning than ever before. The enchanting was still not done and AJ and Luke couldn't practice with their weapons yet so they spent some time working on telekinesis tactics for fights. They discovered that , while telekinesis wasn't incredibly strong, not yet at least, Luke could use it to enhance other forces. For example they could throw a rock and boost the force at the same time, effectively turning regular stones into powerful missiles. Luke could also speed up AJ's strange flight, the result was AJ zipping around the building at incredible speeds, he wasn't supersonic and AJ hadn't built himself to handle that sort of speed so he likely wouldn’t be quite that fast for a long while at least, but it was still impressive.
Their experiments were cut short when Marigold staggered out of her workshop. The gnome looked exhausted, as she stumbled along Seymour who hadn't been seen all morning swooped in and swept her into his arms. He took her into a room and returned a minute later with a fond smile.
“Well, ye realle lucked out fellahs. She dun get like at unless she gets sucked inta er work. Whatever she made ye, is bound te be amazin.” Seymour said while waving them into the workshop.
When they found the weapons it became clear what had taken so much attention. The spear had a few markings and symbols softly glowing, same with the ornate dagger. You could tell they were expertly enchanted right away, it wasn’t clear exactly what they did yet, that would take testing, but they were on par with anything in the fancy shops in town.
The previously plan looking dagger though was different. If they hadn't known to look for a dagger or hadn't been inside the day before to see that there were no other weapons before, they wouldn't have been able to recognize it. The dagger had looked like a single solid piece of iron sharpened to a fine edge with a leather strap wrapped around the handle before.
Now the blade glowed blue on every exposed bit of metal, pulses of light flowed from the hilt to the tip and back always changing color, and the leather wrapping around the hilt had an ever shifting line of symbols swirling along the wrapping, like a digital marquee board in a language humans could never understand. AJ made to pick up the blade but was held back by Seymour.
“One moment laddie”
Seymour reverently picked the blade up very careful to keep the edge from touching anything and pulled out a small steel pocket knife. He made a significant look at AJ and pressed the blades together. With seemingly no effort the steel blade split from the handle and fell to the floor. The show didn't stop there though, the severed blade quickly turned to ice and froze itself to the ground, while the handle burst into flames and melted to slag on the dwarf’s thick gloves.
“Holy shit” Luke gaped
“Aye, I expected et te be tha spear, but obviously I were wrong.” Seymour nodded before continuing, “Mary is ehh… special. Sometimes she makes sumin extra strong. I need ye te understan, this blade es one of a kine now, and dangerous. Et ain't even a tool ne more, just a far too deadly weapon. I wish more’n anythin I could impress on ye tha danger this thing poses, but nothin I say cen properly explain et. I just hope when ye accidently fuck somethin up, et ain't nothin too important.”
Seymour gently placed the dagger back down before rummaging through a bag at his hip. He produced a think, heavy, intimidating looking sheath that matched the weapon. He examined it a moment before selecting a few items from the shelves. Apparently Seymour had picked up a few things from his wife as he proceeded to paint and etch a few symbols onto the sheath. Once finished he delicately slid the dagger into the perfectly matching sheath which made a disproportionate loud ringing sound and click. Seymour bound the hilt to the sheath with a strap and slowly handed it to AJ.
Seymour took a long moment to gather his thoughts and then just said one word, “Careful"
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Once they had the weapons Luke and AJ made their way to the air docks to collect the helicopter and make their way to the capital. Holly had given them short explanations of each town and city so they knew the capital was the city called Icewood, it was situated on the line between the plains and woods climate, and the ice and snow climate. The name followed the trend of naming cities after the climates they separated, but that wasn't always the case, the old name for the city was North Verga it had been renamed around the time the Demon Lord Cycles began.
Once they took care of their business they were to meet the forming Hero party in the border town of the tropical climate called Salmagundi, while in disguise. AJ paid for the small fee for docking, since there were now so many people looking to meet and possibly join the Hero, fees had to be implemented. When the helicopter's platform spun into place they had to verify it was theirs. The vehicle had been modified with some sort of cannons and the broken windshield had been replaced.
When they asked the dock master he told them an elf by the name of Serena had paid for the changes and repairs. It seemed they really wanted to do whatever they could to increase their odds of defeating Kevin.
The flight to Icewood was uneventful but scenic. The town they had been staying in, Nexton, sat very near the border so they hadn't had much time to take in the sights when flying in, not to mention the busted window meant they were only able to see through the camera. Now though, they could see the massive rolling grassland that was unique to this part of Turbeir. Tall grass moved in the wind like waves in water. The image was only enhanced by the occasional monster or animal peeking over the top of the grasses like whales and dolphins breaching the surface.
The ‘woods’ probably deserved the title of forest. It seemed like trees had started spreading from one point and made one massive unbroken forest that wound through the grasslands like a snake. Some sections of trees were miles thick, others you could probably see through while on the ground, but all of the woods were connected. It was strange, the trees were varied, all sorts of different types could be spotted, oaks, pine, birch, even palm. It was clearly not natural for them to all grow together like that, even more strange was the fact that they were all about the same height. From above it made a colorful tapestry of different shades of greens, yellows, reds, and browns.
Luke and AJ kept mostly quiet on the flight, only talking about the map and heading. The flight took a couple hours, fortunately it was quite easy to find any of the cities in Turbeir. All you had to do was travel until you found the very obvious line separating the different terrain and follow it until you found the city in question. Holly had sent word ahead of them so when they came in range of the radios they were greeted and given direction and clearance for landing.
The airport was not like the air docks in Nexton, this was more akin to a regular airport, just with more paths and zones for different types of flight. An official in a suit met them the moment they stepped off the landing pad they were assigned. Whipping back and forth between medieval fantasy and modern styles of building, terrain, dress, food, and animals was starting to make Luke dizzy. One moment they are flying past the griffon nests to their own landing area, the next they are being led to a meeting by a man in a very professional expensive looking suit.
The suit brought Luke and AJ to a very sterile looking room by tram from the airport. When they arrived he began explaining the schedule in a stereotypical butler tone, the kind that made everything he said sound condescending.
“You will meet with the King over dinner, I will retrieve you in three hours for that. Until then this is Dr. Haus, Dr. Suze, and Dr. Pepah. They have been sworn to secrecy and read in on your situation, they will be responsible for handling the matter that has brought you to Icewood. Any questions?”
“Are those their real names?” AJ asked
“Yes… why?” Dr. Haus asked genuinely confused
“Don’t worry about it” Luke stopped AJ before he could make fun of the people who would be fiddling with his head.
The nameless butler guy was already gone leaving them with the doctors.
“If you’ll follow me, we can begin examinations” Somehow Dr. Suze was the no nonsense one and led the way to a fairly normal looking hospital room.
The doctors asked several questions about what they were hoping to achieve with the implant, what sort of experiences Luke had since receiving the implant, if he had any abnormal skills, on and on. When they found out AJ had temporarily linked to Luke the doctors roped him into being examined as well. The entire three hours were spent on tests, scans, and questions. The butler returned and dragged them along to the tram again and on to what was apparently the royal manor. Luke didn't get to see it being whisked around on the underground tram like he was which was unfortunate. They had seen a bit of the city from the air and the green trees butting into a snowstorm was quite a sight.
The butler gave a running etiquette lesson as they were hurried through being cleaned and dressed up by various servants. Luke tuned him out for the most part, meeting the king was secondary to protecting himself from outside intrusions.
Before they could gain their bearings they found themselves being seated at a large table. The dining room was like those you see pompous nobles eating in in the movies. A long polished wood table stood in the center of the room, lit by candlesticks and a massive fireplace. There was surely some subtexts and politics being played at but Luke neither understood nor cared, he just wanted to be done with this and back to the skies to meet with the Hero's party.
Several people entered the room and took seats that looked predetermined. Eventually the last seat was filled by the obvious king. Everyone stood and bowed when he entered the room and only sat when he took his seat. Luke got a good look at the elf king. The man had that unnatural beauty like Serena but nothing else he could see indicated he wasn't human.
“It is good to finally meet you Luke, Holly has told me much about you.” The man's voice reminded Luke of a child's impersonation of royalty when they played pretend.
“Hey, nice to meet you, I heard a little about you too.” Luke didn't know much about subterfuge or rebellion, but using the real names of people who were meant to be in disguise seemed unwise.
“So you knew Kevin before he lost his mind?”
“DAD!” one of the others seated at the table shouted, “We aren't supposed to be talking about that in the open right?”
The man who spoke looked very much like the king, they definitely didn’t look young enough to be the king's son, maybe a brother. Elves seemed to age strangely.
“Calm yourself boy, this is my own dining hall, it is hardly open to the public.”
“What about the servants?” a woman who was seated next to Luke asked
That made the king pause, “Perhaps you are right… Hampton?”
The butler who had been showing Luke around appeared next to the king
“Yes your majesty?”
“Have all the servants from tonight’s dinner killed”
“Yes your majesty"
Hooooly shit. None of the other people at the table seemed to find the exchange odd. Casual killers, all of them. Who was the bad guy in this scenario, Kevin? The king? Everyone?
“Now Luke, tell me what you can do to aid us in this endeavor.” The king continued as if nothing were amiss.
Luke fumbled over his answer, “ahh well, hands… I suppose. I’m gonna get close, join the party, and add my own strength to the mix when the time comes.”
“Hands" one of the women near the king mocked, perhaps a daughter, “We have hands commoner.”
“No that’s not bad" the man who called the king dad before spoke up, “Dirty hands clean the messes made by dirty hands.”
A round of agreement wound through the table, the king however didn't seem satisfied, “That isn't enough to repay the effort I am making for you…” he tapped his fingers on the table which made a loud clacking sound from all the rings he wore, “I know, once you have finished you will return and my scientists will remove and copy that unrestricted implant of yours… yes that will be sufficient I think.”
After the unilateral decision the discussion moved on and wholly excluded Luke and AJ.
The butler Hampton appeared behind their chairs and bent down to speak without being overheard, “Sirs your welcome has been exhausted, you are to return to the clinic immediately.”
No food had been served nor places set at their seats, it seemed they were always meant to be ejected as soon as the king made his proclamation. Luke had to quietly ask AJ if the dinner had really happened, the whole thing was so insane. The royals called for the death of dozens of people as if it were nothing, then commanded Luke to return so they could dig out part of his brain once he had finished doing their dirty work. It didn't seem real.
When they returned the doctors informed them they were working on the modifications and upgrades, it would take until noon the next day. Hampton then showed them to a closet they labeled a guest room until the doctors were ready.
“So… are we still doing this?” AJ asked
“We don't have much choice… I think we should be fine as long as the security is solid. Once we finish with Kevin we…” Luke stopped mid sentence
AJ looked at him questioningly, but Luke shook his head and pointed to his ears and then to the walls. Understanding dawned on AJ's holographic face and he nodded.
“Well anyway,” Luke continued, speaking a bit louder and clearer, “we just need to put Kevin down and then come back here to finish paying the king back. Hopefully the upgrades are good and the security is solid, I imagine Kevin could break any half assed signal blockers.”
They really had to be careful what they said, a wrong word could get them killed, or get a bogus chip installed in Luke's brain. It seemed like the acting wouldn't wait until they had joined the Hero's party, they had been dropped into hostile territory early.